Recently I have been more involved with dealing with the ACPA (Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act), and I wanted to get a chance to state my opinion on the act. As of right now, I can’t discuss my involvment with the act as I may be under confidentiality, but I do want to discuss why I think the act is a horrible act that shouldn’t be in place.

First, lets start with a general background of the ACPA. It was enacted back in 1999, and for the most part are there to hold people liable who register domain names with a trademark, or an individual’s name, and have the sole intent of selling the domain name to the trademark holder or individual. Basically what this act is saying is if you own the domain name TigerWoods.com for example, Tiger Woods would have exclusive rights to the domain name.

The first part of this act doesn’t bother me at all. I think trademarked names shouldn’t be allowed to be registered by an individual who doesn’t hold the trademark. That’s complete fair. If I owned Google, I wouldn’t want someone opening a search engine called Googley.com. It’s unfair, and this act protects Google from that happening. I am not opposed to that at all.

What I am extremely opposed to is that the act protects individual names. I don’t think it is a right to own the domain name with your name in it. It’s business. Someone beat you to registering that domain name. It’s your own fault for not registering it earlier. They should have every right to sell it to you or another buyer. It’s kind of like when you go into a store to buy a candy bar. The person infront of you takes the last Reece’s, the candy you wanted. They beat you to getting that candy. They should have full rights to buy that candy. Of course, this is a very general example, it gets across the general gist of what I have to say.

I just don’t see why individual’s have the right to their own domain name. Business is business. As long as it’s legal, you can profit. If I invest my $10 in buying a domain name, that happens to be the name of a golfer, I should have every right to make money off of his name, and make money by selling it to him, especially if it’s for a reasonable price. The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act allows the individual to take the domain from me, as well as the profits I made off of his name.

Now, of course when you state an opinion, there’s always a flip side to that opinion. ICANN, as well as others who are in support of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, say that if someone else owns the domain name with an individual’s name in it, they can misrepresent the domain name to the public. My comment to that is that the law should be if you are misrepresenting the individual, they have the right to seize the domain from you. If you are not misrepresenting the individual, you should be able to own that domain. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

I read something interesting about what happens if you are guilty of acting contrary to the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. You will be forced to either cancel, or transfer the domain to the individual or trademark owner, as well as be obligated to pay between $1,000 and $100,000 in damages at the court’s discretion and if the plantiffs request damages. So the punishment is harsh.

As I said earlier, the first part of this doesn’t bother me at all, that the act protects against trademarked names. It’s the second part that bugs me. Anyways, sorry for making this so long, it was just a VERY interesting topic that I know is rarely debated, but highly debatable when brought up. So I wanted to get viewer’s opinions on the ACPA as well, to see how mine match up. Please make sure to comment below!